Sharpton: Feds Should Try Death-Penalty Cases

News One is reporting that the Rev. Al Sharpton on Friday will call upon the U.S. Justice Department to take the lead in capital-punishment cases across the country in an effort to prevent states from prosecuting them.

In light of the Troy Davis case, he is calling upon the federal government to set boundaries before any state can move forward with capital-punishment prosecution, he said in a prepared statement obtained by The Root.

Sharpton appeared on the Today show to kick off the campaign to push for the new laws after the execution of Davis took place in Georgia.

"We must not only mourn what happened to Troy Davis but take strong measures so that it does [not] happen again," Sharpton said in the statement. "I promised Troy when I got involved in this case in 2007 that NAN and I, no matter what the outcome, would fight to change the law."

He said that Troy Davis was executed by "the eyewitness testimony of nine people with no physical evidence, no DNA and no scientific evidence. Seven of those eyewitnesses recanted. Under the law, we are proposing that the Troy Davis case would never have been tried as a capital case in the first place. Multiple studies have established how flawed eyewitness testimony is, and 75 percent of the cases overturned by DNA evidence were cases that also had flawed eye witness testimony."